Fewer chances to use Royal Mail
When the Royal Mail began the seemingly uneconomic practice of collecting mail from my local post box at 4pm AND 5.15pm, I should have guessed that before long the later collection would be phased out.
This has now happened.
With ever later deliveries - due to some extent to the postmen not being allowed to start their rounds until after 9am - the squeeze is really on.
The opportunity to answer a letter and have that answer leave in a collection on the same day is dwindling.
Some 25 years ago I served on the Post Office Users' Council and Advisory Committee and the issues seem trivial compared with the degradation of customer service levels which has happened since and which would have been unthinkable then.
I don't blame the staff; they are trying to do their best. Rather it is the policy-makers at Royal Mail who have lost the plot. As soon as a service organisation turns its back on customer considerations, the game is up.
Neil Inkley, Walton-le-Dale

Building flats will cause problems
I believe permission has been granted for the erection of a block of three-storey flats, on land between Egerton Road and Ashton Close in Ashton.
These will overshadow existing homes.
It will be tantamount to having a small spinning mill in one's back yard, not to mention all the other snags such as lack of privacy and the inevitable car parking problem.
I don't think a few hundred tons of masonry on sloping ground is a very good idea. Trees will be felled and wildlife affected.
Anno Domini (name and address supplied)

Power makes people push it to the limits
Following your article regarding the clamping of an engineless car outside a garage it simply reminds me of the studies undertaken into the pathology of power.
The findings are clear: Give, or allow a person or group, power without true accountability and they always abuse it. This leads to behaviour ranging from "mean" to "psychotic".
There are many examples in history such as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. Because they were unchallengable, they simply became more and more extreme.
Youths on some of our estates are a more recent example. Unless they are continually made to be accountable for their actions, they grow in their need to control others. Hence we see such lack of respect for others and even life itself.
In the case of DVLA clampers, this power enables them to feel comfortable in suggesting that they can interpret the law "without fear or favour" and carry out patently stupid actions with impunity.
The public understands the uselessness of challenging these actions as the best that can happen is that the single action is cancelled.
There are no consequences for the official, and the organisation will continue without learning.
Sadly, studies show that when people are treated like this they go on to replicate this behaviour with others.
So the practice of treating people as if they do not matter, spreads.
The only way to stop this is for the Government, who gave them the power in the first place, to intervene, and of course, for the public to refuse to be bullied, like the garage owner you featured on September 27.
Name and address supplied

No need to apologise to Darwin's family
What's with this current Archbishop of Canterbury for making an apology to Charles Darwin's family for alleged vilification of his theory of evolution?
Has the Church of England nothing better to do than make useless gestures to previous generations?
Shall we demand apologies from the Romans, Vikings, Saxons and Normans for invading Britain?
This apology makes the Archbishop look gormless.
Why should he say sorry to the man who has done more to undermine Christian faith than any other person in the last 2,000 years?
Bill Mason, Deacon, Leyland Pentecostal Church

Tighter rules for people immigrating
So it is now official that we have overtaken the Netherlands, in that we have 395 people per square kilometre, the second densest population in Europe behind Malta.
This dubious record can be safely attributed to policies pursued by this Government.
Those who warned that our local services and schools were being swamped, were shouted down as being racist.
Even more worrying is that we are told that this increase, if left unchallenged, will rise to 464 persons per sq km by 2031.
Fortunately, Frank Field MP (Birkenhead) and Nicholas Soames MP (Mid Sussex), in a cross-party alliance, are calling for the number of people arriving to be matched with the same number leaving.
This seems a fair and rather obvious solution. It should have been implemented about 10 years ago .
John Tilley, The Oaks, Chorley

Cyclists are not always innocent
From the tone of JP Peter Ward's letter of September 17, any motorist appearing before him in his magisterial role can expect short shrift if he has hit, or been hit by a drunk on a bike.
A horror of mine is to meet one of these idiot cyclists dressed in black, with no lights on their bikes, wobbling down a dark country road.
Many motorists have met this sort of hazard, and it will be no comfort to know that in the mind of at least one JP, regardless of the situation, he or she will be guilty.
Cliff Didsbury, via email

BBC contradicts employment rates
On page 33 of today's LEP (Sept 18), you claim that "there are more than 333,000 people in employment than a year ago" and that employment is close to record levels.
However, according to BBC News website: "The rise in the headline rate of unemployment to 5.5% took it to its highest level since early 1999."
Moreover, their graph of unemployment over the last 10 years does not show a 330,000 drop in the number of people unemployed since this time last year, nor does it support the view that employment is close to record levels.
Jeff Waters, via email

Thank you for baby charity donations
May I, through your columns, express the gratitude of the Preston group of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child to those who gave donations on August 2 in Preston city centre.
The total collected was £343.19. Thank you very much.
Tony Mullett, Winckley Square, Preston

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